Monthly Archives: March 2011

I had some fun with this video and got some good reactions from it. It was one of those projects where you whip something out and it turns out better than planned.

Again, you can make one free at the Xtranormal site. You just set up an account, pick the scene and characters then type in the dialog. You publish it to the Xtranormal site and then to YouTube, Facebook, etc. with just a couple clicks.

There is something unique about how the characters read the lines. It helps makes points that get lost when there is too much emotion in the voices.

I obviously had some fun with the false teacher, but they really say many of those things and use those lines of argument. Many of the lines were direct quotes. They won’t concede how little they know about other religions that they claim to be true, but with some probing questions you can easily demonstrate that.

While this video won’t convert any false teachers, I do think these could help people be prepared with some basic answers to common things false teachers (or pro-choicers, or atheists, etc.) say. You can show how to give sound, simple answers to their fallacious worldviews.

I hope some of the regulars here will make their own videos like this. Be sure to let me know if you do so I can plug them here.

Great news, and great tactics by the pro-lifers who made this happen. Some cynics think elections don’t count when it comes to the issue of life.

Pro-life Republican Governor Jan Brewer has signed into law Arizona’s ban on racial and sex-selective abortion, a law which is a national first. Lawmakers are also sending to the governor another bill that bans “telemed” abortions as part of an expanded informed consent law.

. . .

The law requires doctors to obtain an affidavit that the abortion is not sought for racial or sex-selective reasons.

. . .

The measure was opposed by Planned Parenthood. “This law creates a highly unusual requirement that women state publicly their reason for choosing to terminate a pregnancy — a private decision they already made with their physician, partner and family,” Bryan Howard, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Arizona, said in a statement.

I’m not naive. I know Planned Parenthood will coach people to check the “Other” box on the “Why do you want to destroy this unwanted human being?” question. And you can trust PP to keep secrets: They won’t even let you know if your 13 yr. old daughter is pregnant by a 25 yr. old guy. They hate this law because it points to the humanity of the unborn. These aren’t blobs of tissue or parasites, these are human beings whose DNA had their features — including sex and skin color — mapped out at conception.

This type of law may help those coerced to have these abortions. Gender-selection abortions are the ultimate misogyny, killing females for the sole reason that they are female. They are very common in Indian and Chinese cultures (those countries have gender imbalances numbering in the tens of millions).

I know this sounds like hyperbole, but it is true: I have yet to see Chuck “Jesus is not the only way” Currie or the United Church of Christ get a single Bible verse right. And I’ve endured reading countless blog posts of his and actually forced myself to listen to some of his sermons. The insincere droning I can overlook, but the false teachings I cannot. Here’s the latest, emphasis added:

In a “Resolution for the Common Good,” General Synod 25 reminds us: “Our Christian faith speaks directly to public morality and the ways a nation should bring justice and compassion into its civic life. In the story of the last judgment, Jesus tells us that nations will be judged by how they care for their most vulnerable citizens, those Jesus describes as, ‘the least of these who are members of my family.’ This story in Matthew (Matthew 25: 34-35) is not about personal salvation; rather it is presented as a story of the judgment of nations.”

Really? So if you trust in Jesus for your salvation but live in a “goat” nation then you “will go away into eternal punishment” but if you reject Jesus but live in a “sheep” nation you will have eternal life? (verse 46) Wow, that is some interesting theology! It isn’t Christian, but it is interesting. Apparently in Chuck’s world you could be a greedy, gay-bashing, drug-dealing, misogynist non-believer but you get eternal salvation as long as your nation borrows from future generations to fund his preferred social programs.

These false teachers can’t get the simplest passage correct, but the larger tragedy is that people read the Bible so little that they can’t recognize it.

Aside from the bad Bible analysis, he uses the typical bad reasoning that his fellow false teacher Jim “the Gospel is all about wealth redistribution” Wallis does, namely that even if the Bible said countries must help in this way that it is a blank check. No, more than a blank check: It is a duty to borrow from future generations to support poorly performing and even counterproductive programs.

And as always, these false teachers who reflexively refer to the “least of these” are not only pro-legalized abortion but pro-taxpayer funded abortion. That means these wolves in sheep’s clothing aren’t just pro-choice, they are pro-abortion — and they claim Jesus is on their side. Crushing and dismembering innocent but unwanted human beings is the opposite of caring for the least of these.

Run, don’t walk, from denominations and false teachers like this.

P.S. Chuck also broke the hypocrisy meter with his support of President Obama’s Random Foreign Policy Generator war in Libya.

So much of history is distilled into sound bites that end up being the opposite of the truth, or at least a distortion of it because of what is left out. The Puritans are a good example. See Winging It: The Puritan Mission.

We are told that the Europeans in general and the Christians in particular were cruel, selfish, greedy folk who came to America to escape persecution and steal all they could from the natives. It isn’t true. Some of that happened, to be sure, but the original intent of the immigrants to America was a missionary intent. This is all the more confounding when you consider that these folks were dyed-in-the-wool Calvinists who believed that God did the choosing. Their job wasn’t to sit back and watch God work, but to obey the Great Commission and participate in God’s work. They did. Don’t buy it when you are told otherwise.

Some businesses cynically promote “giving” that is more about making us feel good about ourselves than truly helping others. Think of companies who sell marked up water where a deliberately undefined percentage of the proceeds goes to charity. Instead of paying an extra 50 cents for a commodity where perhaps a nickel goes to some ill-defined charity and the other 45 cents profits the company, I recommend donating the whole 50 cents and buying your water elsewhere. Or drink tap water. Now you get to release endorphins for being generous and wise.

It encourages people to stay in agriculture when they could move to other industries which could produce more wealth for more people.

It fosters a moral hazard where lower quality goods can be foisted onto artificially captive markets (ie. moral-minded churches) while higher quality goods are sold on the free market. I’ve been the unlucky recipient of this sort of deal where a local church provides fair trade coffee which costs as much as Starbucks but tastes like burnt rubber. This is wholly unfair to the consumer.

Fair trade is based on a Marxist economic understanding where equality of outcomes is held to be the standard of “justice”. For this reason you’ll hear a lot of talk of “social justice” in pro-fair-trade material.

This lie is actually pretty tame relative to their serial hiding of statutory rape and covering up for sex traffickers (Oh, and the fact that they destroy unwanted human beings for a living). But it is still a lie. They don’t do mammograms anywhere.

Memo to those who want PP funded: Open your own wallets, just like pro-lifers do for crisis pregnancy centers. If you think they are so swell, then spend your own money.

Live Action has just released findings of a new undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood.

This time LA fact-checked CEO Cecile Richards’ recent claim on the Joy Behar Show that if PP is defunded “millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning – you know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer.”

Wait, mammograms?

No. An LA actor called 30 PPs in 27 states to always get the same answer: No mammograms here.

Turns out that the average citizen and the late Ted Kennedy have something in common: Plenty of talk about wanting solar but not in their backyard. There’s a word for that: Hypocrisy.

Everyone loves solar, right? Well, until someone puts the panels up

The general public is all for renewable energy — in theory, anyway. But recent renewable projects have raised hackles because of their alleged conflicts with wildlife, damage to Indian spiritual sites, and elevated earthquake risk. And now, objections to green energy based on their, well, ugliness are popping up in New Jersey and Nevada.

Residents and politicians in Ridgewood, Wyckoff, and several other posh suburban towns just outside New York City are attacking local utility company PSE&G for putting up solar panels. Specifically, in an attempt to double the Garden State’s solar capacity, the company has been installing 3-foot-by-5-foot solar modules on utility poles. And the reactions are less than positive: “It’s just horrible,” said Ridgewood’s Deputy Mayor Tom Riche, according to an article in The Record, of Bergen County, N.J. on Sunday.

And that’s the issue in a nutshell: people want cleaner, cheaper, more stable energy, yet, they don’t want to see it. Consider the Cape Wind Project: Ted Kennedy fought it for 10 years, because the wind turbines would be in view of his family compound, and be in the yachting area. He was all for “green” energy, just not stuff that affects him.